Tag Archives: featured

In which we doom all Gregs to their sad, stupid lives for good. #NotAllGregs

On this fine, upstanding episode, Danica and Brandon are talking about ALLLLLLLL of Series 11, featuring the 13th Doctor and her best friends. Her fam. Through the fog of a lot of damn alcohol, they manage to crystallize some opinions about how Chibnall runs the show, in contrast to Russell “The” Davies and Steven “Garbage Panda” Moffat. They are very nice about it, and no one is cussed at. No one. Not even you.

In which we have NO idea what ASMR is, but we sure do have some guesses.

Welcome to 2019, jerks! Danica and Brandon are kicking the year off with their take on “Resolution”, the best Doctor Who episode of 2019. Spoiler alert: the villain is not humanity this time – humanity, empathy and love, are the cure. Also there’s stuff about families and relationships and being a person in there. It’s pretty good.

On this week’s show, Danica and Brandon discuss “It Takes You Away”, in which an idiot makes a lot of terrible life choices, and then has to be saved from destroying all of existence. Could you imagine? “Oh, how did the universe end. With the Time War? Some bullshit with the Daleks? Nah, it was Erik, who wanted a couple more dirty smooches.”

GOOD MORROW kind folks and WELCOME to this SALACIOUS episode of the Doctor’s Whooch, as presented by the DELECTABLE Danica and the BAWDIFOROUS Brandon.

THIS WEEK! A missive regarding “THE WITCHFINDERS”, starring one Mr. ALAN CUMMING, and it may in fact be his GREATEST performance since the RADIANT JOY of JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS was BESTOWED upon this world.

On this week’s episode, Danica and Brandon are talking about the series 11 episode of Doctor Who entitled “Demons of the Punjab” as only two white people can: with unearned confidence. Which makes them uncomfortable and awkward. So hey, all in all, a pretty regular episode of the show. Enjoy!

On this week’s show, Danica and Brandon are talking about “The Tsuranga Conundrum”, which puts The Doctor and Team TARDIS in a bit of a space pickle. Also, there’s a wild space pregnancy, and a WHOLE LOT OF BROKEN FAMILY FEELS. And a cute as hell monster creature. So. There’s that.

Quite a few years ago, in the days before Variant Editionopened, my pal James and I ran a little website called Comics! The Blog. In it’s heyday, it ran at least two articles a day, every weekday, and managed to get a small, if not surprising amount of creators popping in to offer a bit of thanks for talking about their work.

The whole thing was quite the undertaking, one filled with optimism, as the site’s only two rules were simple: talk about things that you love, and be sure to be offer constructive criticism when addressing problems. Since then, I know I’ve definitely fallen away from talking about the things that I love (at least online), so part of this refocus of Submet is going to be about putting forward more joy into the world.

For those who don’t know (partly because I am particularly terrible at self promotion), I do an irregular column over at a site call The Beatabout comic book retail. As you can probably guess, it is usually filled to the brim with finger-wagging at backwards looking comic shops and fans who would drag this industry backwards rather than forwards.

I’m not 100% sure, but this person was probably mad about lines like this:

There’s a toxic idea that the direct market is owed something for it’s place in history and… I don’t know. Maybe there is. Maybe I’m too new that I can’t see it. I didn’t work in those trenches. But from where I stand, the direct market is owed nothing. As a retailer, I would laugh in the face of Marvel if they told me I owed it to the X-Men to place more orders for their books because they once helped float comic shops. All ideas have their time. All delivery methods do as well.

It’s as though the business is constantly evolving or something. Wild!

Anyway. Instead of just cross-posting these and walking away, I’ll be tossing a few “extras” your way in these posts, in the form of ideas that were either cut for space, or didn’t quite fit the narrative I was going for. Which is to say, for every article I write, there’s anywhere from 500-5000 extra words I wrote and discarded, depending on the day.

Writing is fun, and I am tired. Let’s get to it.

Comics have the power to change your life:I wanted to hit this idea a lot harder. As a medium and a force for change, comics can do so much. In terms of this article, it crystallized how I looked at the outside world, and at comic book retail. Comics made me who I am today.

It’s always the end of the world: If you take a look at the history of the comics industry, you’ll find doom around every corner. Portents of the medium’s demise occur frequently, but they’re usually stymied by a shift in how comics get into the hands of readers. When I say “the direct market is doomed”, I don’t mean that the comics industry is doomed – I just mean the current system has been dying for a long time, and delivery system needs to change. Retailers equating the death of the direct market to the death of the industry as a whole seem to forget that they are not the industry, they are a delivery method.

It’s about respect – or so I’ve been told: I can not count the amount of times I’ve been told that I do not respect where this industry has been, because I want to build for it’s future. Asking for change doesn’t mean I’m discounting the importance of structures that once saved an industry – it just means I want you all to be around for the next phase, and digging your heels into the past is just going to leave you there.

Out for blood:What is reallygross about the retailer reaction is the fact that if Catwoman had been murdered in the final pages, nobody would be complaining about a lack of a wedding. As it happens, Batman #50 ends with Selina making a conscious choice on her own volition. She is in charge of her destiny, and has agency. Let’s not pretend this outrage is about the story – it is about that cheap event money that retailers would have be just as fine earning with blood.